Published 2:25 pm, Friday, April 7, 2017

Great Lakes Loons’ radio play-by-play broadcaster Chris Vosters experienced the thrill of calling the team’s first Midwest League championship on the air last September.

And in the months that followed, in his other position as manager of ESPN 100.9 FM programming, Vosters got to relive the special moments that led up to that emotional and improbable championship.

He did so by producing “Loons Championship Lookback,” a 12-part series of one-minute segments that each featured a replay of Vosters’s call of a key moment during that championship run. The segments aired between September and November on 100.9 FM, which also airs the Loons’ games and is owned by the Michigan Baseball Foundation.

Not only was Loons Championship Lookback a fun way for Vosters and Loons’ fans to recapture the excitement of the championship, but the series also won a first-place award in the Sports category at the Michigan Association of Broadcasters’ (MAB) Broadcast Excellence Awards in Lansing on March 8. It was one of five awards received that day by WLUN, the radio station that carries 100.9 FM.

“We were very proud of that (award),” said Vosters, who is starting his third year as the Loons’ broadcaster. “It was a collaborative effort between the (Loons’) sales staff and marketing staff and us at the radio station.”

Vosters said that the idea of producing a look back at the championship run was a no-brainer.

“We just wanted to keep the momentum going from the championship season, and keep it on people’s minds as much as we could into the fall and into the holiday season,” he said.

Once a sponsor, Chemical Bank, was secured for the series, Vosters went to work on creating segments that captured the magic of the Loons’ title run.

Aug. 11 was selected as the starting point for the series, because on that day, the Loons came back from a 10-4 deficit with six runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and beat the Lake County Captains 11-10 in 10 innings. That win started an 18-8 stretch that allowed the Loons to surge into the playoffs, after which they continued their momentum to win all three rounds of the playoffs.

“Starting at that moment (on Aug. 11), I flipped through (my scorebook) and highlighted big plays (from the rest of the regular season and the playoffs),” Vosters explained. “I culled the calls of those dozen plays, and I then created the narrative to go around (each play).”

For Vosters, producing the series was almost as much fun as calling the games live.

“Frankly, the assignment didn’t even feel like work at all,” he said. “It continued to be enjoyable to relive those moments.”

And to earn a first-place award from the MAB was no small feat for a smaller-market station like WLUN, Vosters noted.

“We were up against some pretty big markets,” he said. “There are some pretty good stations in Lansing and Grand Rapids that win awards year in and year out.”